THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
Chris Nolan was reluctant to come back and revisit Batman for a third installment citing that there are very few threequels. He is right, there aren't. Toy Story 3 and The Last Crusade being the only two I can think of off the top of my head.
Firstly, this feels more like a sequel to Begins than it does The Dark Knight, though it does rely on The Dark Knight to be where it is at the start of the film. Some of this has to do with Gotham. In Begins and Rises it does not feel as much like a real city as it did in Knight, more like loosely connected locales.
Hathaway is a revelation. She steals, pun not intended, the movie as she veers from thief from reluctant hero. Much like they have with the other characters, the filmmakers have a perfect understanding the of the character of Catwoman, though she is never referred to as more than Selina Kyle in the movie.
Whilst Hardy was superb as Bane he suffered from his voice. There was a plum Englishness that just did not sit right. Beyond that, he was physically imposing and more than a match for Batman in hand to hand combat. You felt every bone shattering punch he landed on our hero.
As for Gordon-Levitt, he has more screen time than you'd expect and puts in a very good understated performance. There is a nice reveal for his character at the end, though I'd have preferred they'd have taken a slightly different tack.
Oldman and Bale where fantastic, given more of a chance to flex their acting chops than they had been given in previous entries. However, the emotional punch is delivered by Caine toward the end of the movie. If you don't well up at that point, then you are just not human.
It is not without its flaws, the most jarring of which is the switch from afternoon to night in next to no time. It is probably about 20 minutes too long, not that you notice the time passing. It would have been nice to have more Batman, this trilogy was always more about Bruce Wayne.
As I have said in earlier reviews for this trilogy, once again the star turn here comes from the utterly brilliant Wally Pfister. He is easily the best cinematographer working in Hollywood today. Whether or not this will be the Return of the King of the trilogy and rack up across the board awards, one thing is for sure: Pfister will once again walk away with the Oscar.
If you are a fan of the comics, a lot of it is fairly predictable. But not so much that it detracted from the film. It was particularly pleasant when it veered into No Mans Land territory.
If you can, however, watch this movie in IMAX. Screw three'd, IMAX is the true future of cinema.
Whoever does the reboot (it's inevitable, Batman is the American Bond) will have to have some serious balls to follow Nolan et al.
Epic, brutal and brilliant. This is a fitting end to the Nolan Bat trilogy.
Final Rating: 5/5
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